One major focus area in Orleans Central Supervisory Union (OCSU) is student engagement. During the last two years over 40 teachers and administrators have read and discussed the book Total Participation Techniques by Himmele and Himmele. Administrators and teacher leaders have modeled total participation techniques (TPTs) in meetings with colleagues, teachers have created TPT folders to use with students, and learners across OCSU are participating more actively in their own learning.

What does engagement look like in the OCSU environment?

Kindergartners turning and talking about things they notice and wonder during a read-aloud.

Second-graders holding up mini-boards with their responses during a Eureka math lesson.

Fifth graders recording their thinking on a whiteboard or large piece of chart paper and then moving around the classroom to analyze their peers’ recordings and to look for similarities and differences (chalkboard splash).

Middle school students working in pairs with their 9:00 partners (appointment agenda).

High school students participating in a review of content using the three 3’s in a row strategy.

Administrators moving around in an inside/outside circle activity to share about how they are supporting teachers in implementing formative assessment strategies.

This blog post was written by Monique Schneider, kindergarten teacher at Glover Community School. Thanks Monique!​Do you want to take your ordinary lesson to the next level, incorporating movement with your teaching concepts that will enhance student engagement and understanding? In watching the video Dramatic Interpretations of Poetry on the Teaching Channel (https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/dramatic-interpretations-of-poetry), Mr. Wasse takes concepts such as vocabulary acquisition, comprehension of text, character perspectives and peer relationships, and utilizes movement and drama to captivate and motivate student involvement. In listening to the interviews of Mr. Wasse and his students, I am inspired by the creativity and depth this lesson illustrates.

Mr. Wasse uses a familiar movement game (Fox and Hare) for his students at the beginning of the lesson to review and deepen the understanding of the word exclusion. After the game ends, there is a class discussion of the term exclusion, how it was used in the game, and his prompting helps to make this term relevant and connected to what students have experienced in their lives (higher order thinking). He then takes text from poetry to help make connections to this term, and introduces a new vocabulary term, status, to the children. Again, Mr. Wasse scaffolds this new vocabulary term by having students pose their bodies in ways that show someone has a higher/lower status, which is a concrete representation of something that may seem abstract or hard to understand from a sixth grade perspective. Students use an excerpt from poetry to make connections with these terms, and then are given opportunities to create “tableaus” in small groups. These tableaus are frozen scenes of the characters from the excerpt, and how they might be depicted and why. The discussions by students are very powerful to watch, and students are seen working together to justify why they pose in the way that they do. They have the chance to “perform” their tableaus for their classmates, and are given feedback from their peers based on questions/prompts on a teacher-created peer assessment form. They even have a chance to “role play” their character’s perspective by taking questions from the audience about how they feel or their response to other characters in their tableau. Mr. Wasse brings in another technique of asking children to think forward from a character’s perspective. How might a character look ten years from now? What characters would be involved in this new tableau/scene?

After viewing this video, I felt empowered as a teacher to find ways to use movement throughout the day with the students I teach. This video depicted middle school students participating in an “ideal” way, fully engaged and acquiring skills that will be carried on through adolescence and beyond. This video reminds all educators about the power we have when creating/crafting our lessons. What we do and how we do it is the art and science in our profession, having huge implications on student engagement and learning. What Total Participation Techniques are you using to craft your daily lessons? How engaged are your students? I highly recommend taking the time to watch Mr. Wasse and become inspired by his participation techniques.

Note: The Teaching Channel video is about 16 min. long. Total Participation Techniques refer to the text of the same title written by Himmele and Himmele.

​Implementing a new program can be stressful for both teachers and students. One way to mitigate some of the stress is to embed student engagement strategies and formative assessment practices throughout each lesson. Ensuring that all students are actively engaged helps keep the focus on student learning and supports differentiation. Using formative assessment allows teachers to respond to student needs as they occur during the lesson, and this responsive teaching leads to improved learning outcomes for all students.

As part of a class on student engagement/formative assessment, Angelique Brown, principal at Glover School, has created a newsletter that provides suggestions for embedding engagement techniques and formative assessment in Eureka Math lessons. I hope you’ll read the attached newsletter, try some of these strategies, and comment below to let us know how they impacted learning in your classroom.

This blog post was written by Sue Cloutier a teacher in the Orleans Central Early Childhood Program. Thanks Sue!

With our district talking so much about formative assessments, student engagement, and total participation techniques, one may wonder where and/or how to begin. Well, here is a resource (book listed below) and a little support summed up just for you! Before I begin I want to assure you this process is easy! There is only one idea to keep in the back of your mind, and that is, “What do I want my students to get out of my lesson?” First of all, I must let you know upfront that many teachers have already started their own personal journeys through this process of implementing strategies and techniques. I want to assure you that it will take very little time to start your own journey. One important bit of information before we start is: having fun with formative assessment is totally encouraged. Just by reading chapters four and five in the book (listed below), you will already feel confident in making attempts to formatively assess your students; and support student engagement by using total participation techniques.Chapter four includes: “On-the-Spot TPTs.” Chapter five includes “TPT Hold-Ups.” I have ranked the techniques extremely easy, or more challenging than others (this is because the technique takes a longer amount of time than the others).

More information about all of these techniques can be found in the text noted below.

In both chapters four and five,there is an extremely easy format to follow. It lists: *Steps to how they work-this gives you step-by-step directions in how to use the technique. *How to Ensure Higher-Order Thinking-gives you steps to ensure higher-order thinking. *Pause to Apply-gives you ideas on when you might use the technique.

The resource I recommend is a book: Total Participation Techniques, by Persida and William Himmele. (2011)

What engagement strategies do you use to ensure total participation? Comment below to share your ideas!